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“I have been clear at home, and I will be clear here,” Ms. Stefanik is expected to say in her speech, according to a prepared version of her remarks reviewed by The New York Times. “There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel.”Her remarks also appear designed to curry favor with former President Donald J. Trump, who has mentioned Ms. Stefanik, a former George W. Bush White House aide and staunch defender of Mr. Trump, as a potential vice-presidential candidate. Ms. Stefanik has positioned herself as one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal defenders in Congress, a role she first staked out during his first impeachment in 2019. Her prepared remarks for Sunday mention Mr. Trump by name three times while highlighting several of his administration’s accomplishments, including a package of Middle East deals known as the Abraham Accords and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. “We must not let the extremism in elite corners conceal the deep, abiding love for Israel among the American people,” Ms. Stefanik plans to say.

Persons: Ms, Stefanik, ”, Donald J, Trump, George W, Bush, Stefanik’s, Trump’s, Abraham, “ Organizations: The New York Times, House, Abraham Accords Locations: Israel, U.S, Jerusalem

☆ The Key to Winning the White House: Math
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-29 | by ( Susan Milligan | ) www.usnews.com time to read: +6 min

So the Biden campaign is casting its eyes farther afield: South, to be specific, with North Carolina as a primary target and Florida part of the mix as well. That makes North Carolina and its 16 Electoral College votes a tantalizing prospect for the Biden campaign. But if the Democrat also picked up North Carolina, he'd win, 276 electoral votes to 262 for Trump. Biden and Harris also made a rare joint appearance in North Carolina earlier this week. Former President Barack Obama did win North Carolina in 2008 – but that was a somewhat fluky situation, says North Carolina Republican operative Jonathan Felts, who worked in the George W. Bush White House, noting Obama's unusually aggressive push in the state.

Persons: Joe Biden's, Donald Trump's, Biden, Christopher Cooper, Biden –, Cooper, Trump, –, he'd, Mark Robinson –, Kamala Harris, Harris, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Barack Obama, Jonathan Felts, George W, Bush, Felts, Carolina Forward Organizations: Electoral, Trump, Haire Institute for Public, Western Carolina University, Marist Institute, Public, Biden, Democrats, – Trump, Democrat, Sunshine, GOP, Democratic, North Carolina, North Carolina Republican, Carolina Locations: Arizona , Georgia, Michigan, Nevada , Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Michigan , Pennsylvania, Swing States, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin , Nevada , Georgia, Trump . Florida, Parkland , Florida, Trump's, . North Carolina, Southern, Raleigh, Durham, Greensboro, Winston, Salem, Asheville, Wake County

☆ CNN Exclusive: Conservative bigwig Matt Schlapp agreed to hefty settlement to end sexual assault lawsuit
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-27 | by ( Jamie Gangel | Gregory Krieg | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

CNN —The Republican operative who accused American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp of sexual assault last year received a significant financial settlement in exchange for dropping his lawsuit against Schlapp, multiple sources familiar with the case told CNN. The $480,000 settlement was paid to Carlton Huffman through an insurance policy, according to a source familiar with the details. The original lawsuit filed by Huffman against Schlapp asked for more than $9 million in damages. Huffman told CNN that Schlapp made unwanted sexual advances, including groping and fondling his groin without consent, on the ride back from two Atlanta-area bars on October 19, 2022. A former official on the Walker campaign told CNN he does not believe the settlement exonerates Schlapp.

Persons: Matt Schlapp, Schlapp, Carlton Huffman, Huffman, “, ” Schlapp, ”, ” Huffman, Tim Hyland, Mark Corallo, Donald Trump, George W, Bush, Mercedes Schlapp, Republican Herschel Walker’s, Charlie Gerow, Walker, Carlton, Huffman’s, ” “ Organizations: CNN, Republican, American Conservative, ACU, Washington Examiner, Political, Conference, House, Georgia GOP, Republican Herschel Walker’s Senate Locations: Atlanta, CPAC, Walker’s, Raleigh , North Carolina

☆ Fox General Counsel Will Depart
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-11 | by ( Jeremy W. Peters | More About Jeremy W. Peters | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Fox Corporation’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, is departing, the company announced on Friday, in a major shake-up at the company after the landmark $787.5 million settlement it paid to Dominion Voting Systems in April. Mr. Dinh, a former official in the George W. Bush White House who amassed considerable power inside Fox, will stay on through the rest of the year, Fox said. Mr. Dinh gave what some inside the company considered flawed advice during the Dominion suit, which exposed a pattern of deceptive coverage by Fox News after the 2020 election. He insisted that Fox was on firm legal footing and could take the case, if need be, all the way to the Supreme Court, where he believed the company would prevail on First Amendment grounds. Check back for updates.

Persons: Fox, Viet, Dinh, George W, Bush Organizations: Dominion Voting Systems, Mr, Bush White House, Fox, Dominion, Fox News Locations: Viet Dinh

☆ U.S. Officials Face Challenge Sorting Through Intelligence on Wagner Rebellion
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-25 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

While U.S. officials picked up intelligence that pointed to Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's move on the Russian military , it would have been difficult to anticipate specific outcomes of a revolt with high confidence, former U.S. intelligence officials said. The events of the weekend “were not only unprecedented in modern times, but were also nearly impossible to predict,” said Jamil Jaffer, a former senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee and national security official in the George W. Bush White House. The intelligence community, former officials said, would have likely been doing some guesswork on how assertively and swiftly Progozhin intended to act and the extent of the challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, given the mercurial personalities at play. The difficulty of discerning from communications what was genuine and what amounted to idle venting of frustrations, and the lack of any comparable situation in recent Russian history would have also posed a challenge, former officials said.

Persons: Yevgeny Prigozhin's, ”, Jamil Jaffer, George W, Bush, Vladimir Putin's Organizations: U.S, Wagner Group, House Intelligence, House

☆ Disney rocks DeSantis ahead of expected White House bid announcement
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Stephen Collinson | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

Disney did not specifically blame DeSantis for the move, partly citing “changing business conditions.” But the message was clear. In keeping with his bruising political persona, DeSantis reacted defiantly to Disney’s announcement that it would halt the office project. “Ron DeSantis’ failed war on Disney has done little for his limping shadow campaign and now is doing even less for Florida’s economy,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. Another possible GOP primary candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, also leveraged the Disney announcement to jab DeSantis. Given his political exposure on Disney and the combative political image that is central to his White House hopes, DeSantis probably has no option but to further escalate the showdown.

☆ William Burns, a C.I.A. Spymaster With Unusual Powers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Robert Draper | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To mark the 20th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, stood in the lobby of the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and sought to exorcise the ghosts of the prewar intelligence failures that haunt the building to this day. officials on March 19, Mr. Burns acknowledged how the agency catastrophically blundered in its assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Notably Mr. Burns added, “We’ve learned from that hard lesson.” The intelligence the agency and others collected on Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine, he said, “stands as a powerful example of that. And yet the moment only hinted at how Mr. Burns, a key figure in the Biden administration’s support of Ukraine, has amassed influence beyond most if not all previous C.I.A.

But even Democrats acknowledge the issue will give the new GOP-controlled House a fresh line of attack against the White House and may help Trump neutralize or counteract one of the most potent charges against him. And of course, the FBI investigation into classified documents on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server may have sunk her 2016 presidential campaign. Recent polls show most Americans have little interest in Congress investigating Biden and are more likely to trust him over Trump or the new Congress. “I think House Republicans have tied themselves into knots already,” Petkanas added, noting GOP lawmakers have downplayed Trump’s documents. James Comer said Trump’s documents are not 'a priority.’ So how can they with a straight face say that the Biden documents have legs but Trump’s do not?”

Congress' failure to pass any meaningful immigration reform stretched to more than two decades in the last session, which ended last month. Here's a timeline of Congress' failure on immigration since President Bill Clinton left office. The bill passed the House, and the Senate passed the Comprehensive Reform Act of 2006, which was backed by the Bush White House. 2013 — With President Barack Obama in the White House, a bipartisan group of senators, nicknamed the Gang of 8, negotiated an immigration reform bill that was approved in the Senate. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., speaks about immigration reform legislation on Capitol Hill on April 18, 2013.

☆ Secret 9/11 memo reveals Bush rewriting the history of the 9/11 attacks and the warnings he'd tuned out
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

The ten members of the 9/11 Commission got to ask him and Vice President Dick Cheney any question they wanted about the September 11th attacks. What the new memo makes clear is that the White House's lack of urgency in facing down the domestic Al Qaeda threat wasn't all that complicated. Fortunately for Bush, the 9/11 Commission Report was careful not to point the finger directly at the sitting president. Still, when set beside the newly declassified memo, their official version of history as described by the 9/11 Commission Report feels incomplete, and sanitized. On the question of whether Al Qaeda came up during the August 17 briefing, Morell said he did not remember.

Two of his revenge picks to knock off House Republicans who voted to impeach him lost critical general election races in Michigan and Washington. To Mr. Trump, none of that had any bearing on his desire to return to power. “A perfect call.” Absconding with classified documents from the White House? “I think the question is who is the current leader of the Republican Party. In light of what unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, that felt more like the wishful thinking of a born optimist than the judgment of a seasoned student of Mr. Trump.

PITTSBURGH — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are at the moment their parties’ leading candidates for 2024. But more competitive midterm contests appear poised to inject a host of new prospects into the 2024 conversation for both parties. That governors would already find themselves in the 2024 spotlight comes as little surprise to political observers. “Governors get s--- done, right?” Shapiro said in a recent interview after batting away questions about his own future ambitions. Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist who formerly worked at the Democratic Governors Association, said Biden is and will remain Democrats’ top choice in 2024.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The oldest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center was released and “reunited with his family” in Pakistan, the country's foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday. “We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family,” the statement said. The Pentagon said in a statement Saturday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had “notified Congress of his intent to repatriate Saifullah Paracha to Pakistan” last month. Following Paracha’s release, 35 detainees remain in Guantanamo Bay and 18 have been cleared for release, according to Amnesty International. The most high-profile prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay prison is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

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